I would also what more than a single hectacre, while 2.5 acres is a decent chunk. If I were going to move over there and try to help their economy and help repopulate the land, I would want a little more something like 10+ acres.

This.

If you're someone who's interested in homesteading, check out the Alaskan laws on it. If I recall correctly, you can basically stake a claim Pioneer-style to a section of land, and as long as you work to improve it (for agriculture, cattle, whatever), it's yours. Have to do a bit of work with the Alaskan government about it, since while Alaska allows homesteading on state land, BLM forbids homesteading on federal land. But a few calls can help with that and probably give you some insight into good places to settle.

And definitely better to live in Alaska than Russia, I'd say.

Alaska has no such programs in existence at this time. In the past, they did have true home steading claims. Then they had improvement claims where you could stake and start using and they would then sell you the land at a discount.

At this time, they only do straight land sales. At or slightly above fair market value. Where they differ from traditional land sales is they offer an owner financing type plan at a very generous interest rate of prime +3%, regardless of buyers credit history.

_________________Commies to the left of me, Nazis to the rightHere I am stuck in the middle... with you?

In the rural parts of southern states like MS, LA and AL and acre of land can go for about $2,000 and acre and a 5 acre plot for as little as $5,000 in total.

Simple question do you want to change your citizenship for $5,000 that you earn in 4 years?

Answer this question and you have your answer.

A sarcastic question deserves a sarcastic answer.

Abraham Lincoln in 1855 wrote:

As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

_________________Commies to the left of me, Nazis to the rightHere I am stuck in the middle... with you?

Zharki village, Russia - Antonina Nikolaeva thinks her village needs no public school or even a store.

"Only old people are left here. And what do we, old people, do? We die," the grey-eyed, portly 75-year-old widow said, standing in the doorway of her unpainted wooden house made of entire logs.

The home was built years before Nikolaeva's birth, when dozens of collective farmers populated this village in the Pskov region, which lies 600km west of Moscow.

These days only eight people live in Zharki, one of Russia's dying villages that have become painfully ubiquitous throughout Russia. While President Vladimir Putin flexes the Kremlin's military and political muscles in Syria and Ukraine, his own nation's countryside - a backbone of Russia's national identity, culture, and demographics for centuries - is dying, slowly and inevitably.

Although rapid urbanisation and industrial farming depopulate rural areas from China to Canada, the situation in Russia is especially catastrophic. Almost 36,000 villages, or one in four, have 10 residents or fewer. Another 20,000 are abandoned, according to Russia's latest nationwide census conducted in 2010.

Fewer than a quarter of Russians live in rural areas these days - three times fewer than 120 years ago, according to the only tsarist-era census done in 1897.